Orange County “Wealth Coach” Sentenced To Federal Prison For Running $25 Million Scam

Thanks in part to licenses to practice law and mortgage brokering in California, Gerald Lawrence Wolfe once boasted that he and his wife enjoyed monthly income that topped $150,000.

Wolfe, 42, bragged so much about his financial acumen that he confidently presented himself as a “Wealth Coach” with a “dynamic” and “entertaining” personality that won him a weekly show on a Los Angeles FM radio station as well as homes in Orange County and Hawaii.

But it turns out that this Aliso Viejo lawyer was a glorified con artist who designed an elaborate, $25 million straw man residential mortgage scam that, according to the federal prosecutors based in Santa Ana, stole $8.8 million from 14 investors and left 27 Southern California properties in unnecessary distress.
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Yesterday afternoon, Wolfe–who still won't admit guilt–hoped U.S. District Court Judge Andrew J. Guilford
would go easy on him with a punishment no more severe than probation.
After all, his legal woes have “forced” him to now live in a North
Dakota apartment, he argued. (That's the first I've heard that living in
North Dakota equates to federal prison time.)

I doubt Assistant United States Attorney Brett A. Sagel, who along with Joseph T. McNally
prosecuted Wolfe, was amused by the convicted felon's stance. Knowing
the economic devastation caused by the crimes, Sagel pushed for a
nine-year prison sentence plus $7.6 million in victim restitution. A
stiff punishment could be an important deterrence to future white collar
criminals, he argued.

But Guilford split the baby. He handed
Wolfe a 46-month prison term, restitution requirements and ordered him to undergo three years of supervised
probation when he emerges back into society.

The judge also gave him until June 1 to surrender to the U.S. Bureau of Prisons.

R. Scott Moxley’s award-winning investigative journalism has touched nerves for two decades. An angry congressman threatened to break Moxley’s knee caps. A dirty sheriff promised his critical reporting was irrelevant and then landed in prison. The U.S. House of Representatives debated his work. Federal prosecutors credited his stories for the arrest of a doctor who sold fake medicine to dying patients. Moxley has won Journalist of the Year honors at the Los Angeles Press Club; been named Distinguished Journalist of the Year by the LA Society of Professional Journalists; and hailed by two New York Times Magazine writers for his “herculean job” exposing Southern California law enforcement corruption.